Chicken Little Was Right

A United Express commuter jet flying out of Bradley on Saturday dropped a landing gear door on a park in Maryland during its approach to Dulles. Nobody was hurt.

Said a United Airlines spokeswoman, ""Customers on the flight were always safe." Good point. But I think maybe the non-customers under the flight might have been at risk for a minute there.

My second-favorite quote from that story: "Various things fall off airplanes from time to time, but it's fairly unusual to have one of these landing-gear doors fall off," [FAA spokeswoman Laura] Brown said. "Airplanes are designed not to shed parts."